John Romero

John Romero

The ‘Father of First-Person Shooters’: award-winning programmer and designer behind video game classics such as ‘Quake’, ‘Doom’ and ‘Wolfenstein 3D’. Need we say more?

Meet John Romero at our Playtest Arena on Saturday 18 August 2018.

John Romero is an award-winning programmer, game designer and level designer whose work spans over 130 games, 108 of which have been published commercially. Romero is considered to be the “father of first person shooters” having led the design and contributed to the programming and audio design of the iconic and genre-defining games DOOM, Quake, Heretic and Hexen. Romero is also was also one of the earliest supporters of eSports and a professional-level DOOM and Quake player. To date, Romero has co-founded eight successful game companies including the likes of id Software, Gazillion Entertainment and most recently Romero Games in Galway, Ireland. He is considered to be among the world’s top game designers, and his products have won well over 100 awards. Romero most recently won the Legend Award at 2017’s Develop: Brighton. One of the earliest indie developers, Romero began working in the game space in 1979 on mainframes before moving to the Apple II in 1981. He is a completely self-taught programmer, designer and artist, having drawn his inspirations from early Apple II programmers.